Advisors

Charles Browne

Ed.D. Senior Science and Pedagogy Advisor for EnglishCentral and Professor of Applied Linguistics at Meiji Gakuin University in Japan, is a specialist in CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) and Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition and has helped guide the development of EnglishCentral's language learning applications and teacher support tools based on over 25 years of EFL teaching and software development experience in the Asian market.

Yasunari Harada

A member of Advisory board for EnglishCentral, is Professor of English at the undergraduate School of Law and director at the Institute for Digital Enhancement of Cognitive Development of Waseda University in Tokyo. He is a cognitive scientist in formal and applied linguistics, with expertize in the use of ICT tools and natural language resources in innovating language learning and has helped field-test EnglishCentral at its initial stage of development.

Axel Bichara

is a partner in the technology group. He joined Atlas Venture in 1993 and focuses on software investments. Before coming to Atlas Venture, he was Vice President of Product Development at Premise, a venture-backed software company which he co-founded in 1987. Premise was acquired by Computervision in 1991. Among the companies Axel has funded, he was first round lead investor in SolidWorks (acquired by Dassault Sytemes), SpeechWorks (IPO, later merged with Nuance) and Phase Forward (IPO, later acquired by Oracle). Axel currently serves on the Boards of Atlas portfolio companies CloudSwitch, EnglishCentral, Globoforce, Marathon, NaviNet, OwnerIQ, Pixtronix, Recorded Future and VideoIQ. Axel holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Master of Science degree from MIT and a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering from Technical University Berlin.

Masayasu Morita

Executive Director - Japan. is the Founder and CEO of Hitomedia, an online multimedia company focused on the educational space in Japan. He is also an Executive Director of ALC Press, a leading provider of English language learning content in Japan. He has a Masters in Education from Harvard and a Masters in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge.